The Origin of Phrases - Part 2

Between the devil and the deep blue sea
While Satan is out sailing on warm Sunday afternoons, he likes to whisper his secrets to the ocean. He’s surprisingly deep. Like the ocean.

Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth
When hired to replace the broken butter machine behind the snack bar at his local cinema, a young employee quickly learned that butter melts faster if you sit on it.

Blood is thicker than water
From a recent campaign in Australia where the government tried to deal with the drought by convincing the public to drink blood instead of water. They claimed it contained more nutrients and was therefore better for you. Only the Twilight fans were up for it.

Bubble and squeak
One of the world’s first children’s television programs, Bubble and Squeak was the story of a bar of soap (Bubble) and a rubber duck (Squeak) who lived together in a bathtub. It was taken off the air just two minutes into the first episode when a buxom blonde entered the tub and Bubble ended up all over her.

They’re like chalk and cheese
Used to describe a pale person and their stinky, jaundiced friend.

Cloud nine
When God did his rough draft of the sky he only managed to draw nine clouds before his white crayon snapped. With only red, brown, orange and yellow left intact, he moved on to planning the deserts.

Cold feet
The first man to miss his wedding did so after losing his feet to frostbite when his best man wrongly assumed it would be a brilliant buck’s night prank to leave him drunk and passed out halfway up Mt Everest.

The buck stops here
A signpost you’ll find halfway up Mt Everest.

Cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey
The now extinct brass monkey was the most fertile of all creatures.

Bury the hatchet
What those of us who studied Gary Paulson’s Hatchet in highschool would like to do to that novel.

Curiosity killed the cat
First used when a cat who clearly hadn’t seen enough horror movies went to investigate a strange noise.

The cat’s out of the bag
Refers to the curious cat's attempted escape.

A cock and bull story
In the late 16th/early 17th centuries, a rooster and bull co-wrote a number of remarkable plays. In an attempt to stop the public from making a fuss about the abilities of his magic writing animals, the farmer who owned them tried to cover it up by attaching the pseudonym ‘William Shakespeare’ to the plays.